I reach out and touch the door, the paint coming away in clumps, like someone has put their fist through it, and when I look closer, the hinges are bent, and there are more dents at the bottom.

The rest of the house is immaculate, but this looks like a battleground.

I feel my chest tighten and back away, then turn and walk into the main bedroom where Jamie is quickly moving from drawer to closet and everywhere in between.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

“Looking for clues. If Clara knows Mr. Collins, maybe her parents do too.”

“No. We should go.”

Who smashes up someone’s bedroom door? No one good. No one whose house we should be breaking into.

Jamie starts going through the dirty clothes basket, reaching into the pockets of trousers and jeans and pulling out whatever he can find.

“Come on,” I say, but he’s holding something out to me with a strange look on his face.

“What is it?”

“Where was the last murder?” he asks.

“Sheffield.”

“You should see this receipt,” he says. “Look at the address.”

It takes me a while to find it. But when I do, I gasp. It’s from a supermarket in Sheffield.

At 3:14 the morning after someone carved DEAD into the fifteenth victim, Bernie’s stepdad bought a coffee near the crime scene. He paid in cash, but he kept the receipt.

“It wasn’t Mr. Collins,” I say. “It was him.”

Chapter 131

I hold the receipt tight but not too tight, terrified it’s going to rip or I’ll lose it or it will vanish from between my fingers. It feels so fragile.

I should be wearing gloves, slipping it into a sealable bag, and handing it to the forensics team. Instead, I gently fold it and put it in my sock.

Jamie starts going through the bedside table, pulling out bank statements and bills.

“Maybe there’s more,” he says, handing me piles of paperwork.

Bernie’s stepdad is named Elliot Farrell. He’s Clara Farrell’s father. He’s the secret she was too scared to tell. But we don’t have time to check all this. We need to leave.

Before we go, Jamie gives me a strange look, nods, and hugs me. It feels weird, and then it doesn’t, and we stay like that for longer than we should.

At some point, my arms copy his, and we hold each other.

And as we stand there, slowly feeling less awkward and then more awkward than ever, we hear the front door open and realize we are trapped.

Chapter 132

“Shit,” Jamie whispers, stuffing the clothes back in the dirty clothes basket. He turns and looks at me, his eyes conveying something I’ve never seen before.

“When you get the chance…run.”

“What?”

He walks back to me, holds both my arms, and says, “Just run.”